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Rebirth
Rebirth is the first episode of the seventh season of Futurama, and the first episode of the series to air on Comedy Central. The episode is counted as the 89th of the series. Plot Fry walks in the lab where Farnsworth is and asks him why his hair is frizzy, also why he is covered in burns. Then the Professor explains what happened after the final movie ended. He explains that the wormhole they pass through to escaped Zapp Brannigan was actually the Panama wormhole, a sort-of "Comedy Central Channel" for shipping. Unfortunately, the Nimbus goes through too and began to fire on the Planet Express ship, damaging it. Fearing that they may crash, the crew activates their safety spheres. However, Farnsworth's sphere covered his whole body while everyone else's shielded only their heads, in which is because the professor was selfish. They then crashed, as well as the Nimbus, right by Planet Express, with only Fry and the Professor surviving, while everyone else became skeleton from the neck down. He drops them in the machine filled with stem cells, which he had plucked from healthy adults he had murdered himself, in an attempt to revive them. As a result, everyone comes out regenerated. Zapp is not dropped in and is still hanging but he is still alive despite having most of his body become a skeleton. Bender experiences difficulty with his rebirth, with his power supply being shot. Therefore, Farnsworth attaches his new doomsday device in Bender's chest cavity. However, the device's output is too powerful for Bender's body. He has to burn off the excess energy as fast as it's produced, like continuously partying, otherwise the energy will build up and he'll "explode and kill everyone here in a fireball of melted gears and splattered bowels!" Fry then tries asking Leela out for a date, only to notice that she hasn't emerged from the birth machine. When she does, she doesn't wake up, even to the Professor's poking stick. Sadly, Leela is in an irreversible coma. Fry, depressed about Leela's state, goes to a Build-a-Bot store and builds a robot Leela. However, it doesn't act like her, so the Planet Express crew uploads her memories and appearance, taken from security camera footage. The robot Leela acts like her when she was last alive but soon finds out about her robotic nature when a hostile Nibbler takes a bite at her arm, exposing her wiring; she freaks out for an entire day. Uncertain about herself, robot Leela and Fry decide to just be friends. After determining that the real Leela can't be wakened (due to repeated attempts with hitting and noise), the crew travel to the planet with the Cyclophage's preserve. Here, they attend Leela's funeral and read out her last will: her corpse is to be fed to the wild Cyclophage in the event of coma. As the beast approaches, Bender's incessant and inappropriate behavior, causes Leela to wake up to tell him to shut up. Leela is initially relieved, before she sees robot her and Fry kissing. After escaping from the Cyclophage, which latches onto their ship, they return to the base where the two Leela's confront each other and Fry. They both scold him and run away in anger. Later that night, Fry proclaims his true motive for returning Leela as a robot, while the real Leela listens on, hidden away. She forgives him, only to be interrupted by the Leela-Bot. The two Leelas fight each other, which the entire crew comes to watch. Amy passes Fry a ray gun to choose which Leela to shoot. Both Leela identify which one is which but Fry is slow on the uptake, at which they both call him an idiot. Fry then puts the gun down, refusing to shoot, only to accidentally shoot himself, revealing himself to be a robot. The Professor explains Leela didn't die during the crash due to Fry's body shielding her. Farnsworth tossed his remains into the birth machine but nothing happened. Distraught, Leela built a Fry-bot. Unfortunately, the robot Fry experienced a malfunction due to Leela putting too much copper wadding in its stomach, resulting in it being burned and Leela being electrocuted, erasing both of their short-term memories. The Professor retrieved Leela's remains for rebirth, just as the robot Fry walked in on him. It is then that the real Fry pops out of the machine. The robots then declared that they love each other and shed their skins and leave, speaking in Terminator-like voices. The real Leela is more confused over what just happened. Fry assures her that he will wait for her eventually. Bender decides he is fed up with constant partying and begins to vibrate with the excess energy. The Cyclophage suddenly emerges, and attempts to eat Leela. Bender's severe vibrations cause one of his eyes to fall out, and the Cyclophage swallows him, believing Bender to be a cyclops. The device explodes, killing the creature. Bender emerges intact and the Professor declares that Bender expended his excess energy. The crew leave in order to celebrate, and Zapp Brannigan emerges from the birth machine saying wheeee. Ongoing Themes Real life pop culture references Bender, Fry and Leela visit studio 122133. Mathematically 122133 is 54, which may be reference to Studio 54 which was a popular New York nightclub from 1977 to 1981. Identity * The entire crew except Farnsworth are killed, as well as Zapp and Kif. Their bodies are revived via Farnsworth's stem cell vat. They seem to remain the same persons that they were before, that is, they aren't obviously zombies or anything strange. * Leela made Robo-Fry and Robo-Fry made Robo-Leela. Both robots spend some time believing that they are the originals. Twice during this episode, Robot-Leela can be found musing on the meaning of identity and the nature of consciousness. * When Farnsworth finally tells the whole story and Leela learns that Fry is dead, she says, "My god, I can't believe I'll never see that particular Fry again." * The new Fry who appears at the end of the episode isn't simply revived as the others are. Their heads stayed intact, so they are presumably the same persons as before. But Fry's brain was destroyed: the person who comes out of the stem cell vat is a clone of the dead Fry. In other words, through Farnsworth's miracle of science, this person is a copy of the original Fry in every sense that the robot was a copy of the original Fry. Fry and Leela Fry and Leela pick up where they left off in the previous episode, only more so. When Fry proves to be unrecoverable, Leela is so grief-stricken that she creates a robot-Fry. This is a surprise, given Leela's historical cool-headedness about their relationship. Perhaps losing him has intensified her newly warming feelings for him. It is no surprise that robot-Fry creates a robot-Leela. Fry appears not to changed much: he shows more than once and finally announces explicitly that he loves "any" Leela. Robot-Leela turns out to be slightly more cool-headed than Leela: Leela was so grief-stricken that she created a fake Fry, while robot-Leela wants to cool their relationship while she tries to sort out her confusion over her own identity. Fry expresses his feelings more vehemently than ever before, saying, "I love Leela, always and forever." Hearing Fry say this, Leela unambiguously expresses love for Fry for the first time. Fry shows that he has in fact grown a little, when, after the robots run away together, he tells Leela, "I waited a thousand years for you. I can wait a little longer." This is precisely the sort of thing Leela has always been hoping to hear: a sign of maturity with a touch of romance. Character Arcs Farnsworth pronounces "whooping" correctly. Injury, Dismemberment, Death * At the beginning of the episode Fry is covered with horrible burns, and nine of the eleven major characters are dead and hanging gruesomely over a vat of stem cells. As we learn later, although these crewmembers are "revived" in some sense, this Fry is a robot, and the real Fry is dead. That is, really dead. * Zoidberg cuts off Hermes' "umbilical cord". * Bender's antenna pokes Fry in the eye. * Bender dies for a moment. * Leela spends some time in a coma and a euthanasia/memorial service is held for her. * Bender causes various unspecified injuries on a dance floor at a bar and is thrown out onto his back in the street. * Leela's comatose body takes a beating in Farnsworth and Fry's final attempts at reviving her. * The two Leelas have a karate fight over Fry. * Robot-Fry accidentally shoots himself in the chest with a ray-gun. * Excessive vibration causes Bender to drop one of his eyes when he decides finally to stop partying. * Bender explodes inside the cyclops eater, apparently killing it. Category:Episodes Category:Season 6